Stony Brook Grist Mill gives live demonstrations at its corn mill. Why you should see it

BREWSTER – Two children watched Apprentice Miller Scott Leonhardt feed corn into the hopper at the Stony Brook Grist Mill.

Ten-year-old Ida, and 7-year-old Mose Sigoss, leaned against the rail separating the stone mill apparatus from visitors on July 23. Ida asked what Leonhardt was doing.

The question offered an opportunity to teach about the history of the mill and how Brewster residents of old once lived. 

Leonhardt showed them how corn kernels dropped from the hopper into a flat pan where a wobbly stick guaranteed the kernels would be fed, one by one, into the grist mill and would be ground into corn meal.

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Mill fueled by water power

Water flowing down a sluice from a retention pond turned the water wheel. That wheel turned what Head Miller Doug Erickson called a bull wheel, a huge, wooden, 48-toothed wheel that sits inside the mill building. The bull wheel turned a 12-toothed steel wheel, which turned a bevel gear, which turned a 1,400- pound stone on top of another stone half that weight, crushing the kernels.

Ground meal flowed from a chute into a pan where Erickson bagged it for sale.

Ben Sigelman, the children's father, said his mother used a grain grinder when he was growing up. The pancakes and muffins she made from that meal were delicious, he said, comparing it to fresh ground coffee.

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During the pandemic, Sigelman and his family watched videos about primitive technology where people made things from scratch. He brought his children to the mill so they could see real working technology from hundreds of years ago.

Site a working mill producing cornmeal

The mill draws in history buffs, the curious, and those seeking something a little different from the usual Cape fare. The Stony Brook Grist Mill offers a look at a working mill, a museum that houses Native American and colonist artifacts dating back to 1663, a working loom, and a glimpse at what was once known as Factory Village. It's a reminder that Brewster was once an industrial center on Cape Cod. 

The restored grist mill is a replica of a 19th century mill. Local Millwright Andrew Shrake built it according to design plans 11 years ago. The location is believed to be the site of Brewster’s first fulling mill, where woolen cloth was cleaned and shrunk, according to Erickson. The post and beam, 2½ story building on a 20-by-20-foot foundation was built from lumber salvaged from the town’s salt works.

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The mill is on Stony Brook, where a drop of 26 feet from a series of kettle ponds to the sea offers a built-in power source. Plymouth Colony Gov. Thomas Prence saw the potential and bought the land from the Wampanoag Indians in 1663. A grist mill, fulling mill, and eventually a series of businesses grew around the site. In 1940 the town purchased the mill and surrounding property.

In 2000, the Stony Brook Factory Village National Register District was certified as a national historic site. Its 85 acres include the Dillingham Cemetery, a series of fish ladders and the remains of several earlier mill foundations, according to the town’s website. In the spring, thousands of herring make the journey up the fish ladders to the  Upper and Lower Millponds.

Back to to time when clothing woven by hand

In the second-floor museum, Patricia Stark sat at a huge barn loom. Minutes before a few children had sat beside her on the long bench, choosing fabric for the shuttle and pushing on the treadles if their feet reached. She explained how the massive machine worked and said most families had them in Brewster’s early days. It was how they made cloth for clothes and blankets.

On display were knife cleaners, vegetable slicers, coffee grinders and pan lamps, musical instruments, cobblers’ tools and a sausage stuffer. There were dibbles and drills from local Indigenous peoples and cultivation tools and gaming stones from Native Americans across the country. But it is the banter between visitors and volunteers that makes the old mill come alive.

Volunteer Bill Barnstead sat on a wooden box near the waist-high stone foundation watching Leonhardt and Erickson. He could see the chute feeding the water wheel through an open window to his right.

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“It’s old technology that works,” said the retired mechanical engineer.

Another group of visitors came through the door and Barnstead greeted them warmly. He struck up a conversation with a man standing closest to him. He pointed out the four-to-one, or 48 teeth to 12 teeth, ratio between the bull and steel wheel.

Any idea why they might have used 47 or 49 teeth in the olden days, he asked? It was because of wear and tear on the wooden teeth, an odd number would even out the grinding process.

What it means to be 'milling around'

Did you ever hear the expression "milling around?" he asked.

The expression came to describe farmers waiting for the mill to get up and running so they could grind their grain.

How about "keeping your nose to the grindstone," he asked?

One explanation is that a miller would keep his nose close to the grindstone to smell if the stones were overheating and burning the grain.

The water wheel was turning slowly and Erickson sent Leonhardt out to open the dam a bit. The action would let more water into the retention pond, which fed the sluice, which would make the water wheel go faster. The wooden water wheel can power up to about 13 horse power, Erickson said.

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Erickson had 150 pounds of corn kernels to grind and he wanted the millstone to move faster. He took Leonhardt's spot feeding the hopper. Barnstead sat on the stool at the chute where the meal came out and started bagging it. Fresh cornmeal is sold in $3 and $5 bags.

Samples of Indian pudding made from the mill’s stone ground fresh cornmeal, milk, eggs and molasses were given away for free on Saturday.

"It's an inflation beater," Barnstead said about the mill. "There's no admission price."

For more information go to https://www.brewster-ma.gov/stony-brook-grist-mill-museum.

 Contact Denise Coffey at dcoffey@capecodonline.com. Follow her on Twitter: @DeniseCoffeyCCT.

This article originally appeared on Cape Cod Times: Cape Cod's Brewster Grist Mill brings 19th century technology to life